Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform, has filed its first quarter revenue numbers to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The good news for MAGA-loving stockholders is that the company, of which Trump owns a reported 64.9 percent of the outstanding shares, pulled in a cool $770,500. Now get your sad horn sound ready: It also reported a net loss of $327.6 million.
In a statement, the company’s CEO, former House member and Republican attack dog Devin Nunes, said the losses were due to costs in finalizing a merger with shell company Digital World Acquisition Corp. Nunes, best known for suing parody Twitter accounts, said Trump Media would now be exploring and pursuing “a wide array of initiatives and innovations to build out the Truth Social platform including potential mergers and acquisitions activities.”
Since going public in March, Truth Media’s inflated valuation led to the stock’s value plunging shortly after an initial rise. The first quarter filing comes just one month after the company’s stock plummeted for a second time after the company announced it was considering adding more than 15 percent more stock to the publicly available shares, devaluing current stockholders’ shares.
The stock ended the trading day only five percent down after the quarterly report was released, NBC reports. However, this seems to go along with what experts have characterized as Trump Media’s “meme stock trajectory.”
Meme stocks show dramatic gains and losses due to their stock value being directly connected to internet popularity on various social media platforms. The inherent issue with these stocks is that they are usually untethered from any material evaluation of the company being traded.
This frequently leads to pump-and-dump activity on stocks like Trump Media, with buyers inflating the value over short periods of time by creating social media buzz and then quickly dumping the stock for a profit.
When Truth Social first launched in early 2022, the site quickly went down with technical issues, potential copyright issues, and executives jumping ship. Even though the net losses this year amount to almost one-third of a billion dollars, the company “believes it has sufficient working capital to fund operations for the foreseeable future.”
Or until Trump dumps his shares for some quick cash.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
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The "unified reich" headline appears in a political ad posted by Donald Trump on Truth Social
A video posted to Donald Trump’s account on his Truth Social platform Monday and deleted on Tuesday flashed the phrase “the creation of a unified Reich” on screen when envisioning what America would be like should Trump return to the White House.
The video sparked outrage that went beyond social media, with Good Morning America congressional correspondent Rachel Scott saying that it was “not normal” for presidential candidates to share videos containing “references to Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler.”
The Associated Press reports that Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt claims the video was not sanctioned by the campaign. She said it was created by a "random account online" and posted by an anonymous staffer who didn’t spot the Nazi-related reference. Considering the poor quality of the video, that seems almost plausible.
But this explanation contradicts what Trump has said about who controls his personal Truth Social account, and it fails to explain a pattern of Nazi dog whistles that has long been a part of Trump’s act.
The actual line of text that ends with the words “unified Reich” is somewhat faint and difficult to read on screen. There are also other phrases scattered around the images in the video, including handwritten notes related to World War I and other text that is hard to read.
However, it’s difficult to believe that the use of this snippet of text was accidental. Not only is it featured as the video launches into claims about what will happen if Trump is victorious, but the same block of text returns a second time next to the MAGA logo at the video’s conclusion.
These words appear twice, at prominent positions in the video, in places where the camera pauses and zooms in. The inclusion and positioning of the text were clearly intentional.
There’s also an issue with the campaign’s claim that some unknown staffer posted this video. Trump has made it very clear that only he and former White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino have access to his account.
But the biggest reason to believe the use of Nazi phrasing in a Trump campaign video was intentional is because it’s part of an extensive pattern. Trump has filled his campaign rallies with phrases lifted from the writings of Adolf Hitler. That includes talking about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the country and describing his opponents as “vermin” to be eliminated. Trump has echoed phrases from the Holocaust, modeled his “Big Lie” election denial after Nazi propaganda, and published an ad tagging his supposed enemies with a symbol the Nazis used for political prisoners.
The “unified Reich” ad isn’t a shocking example of a singular slip-up: It’s another instance of Trump’s willingness to blow a fascist, white supremacist dog whistle. This is the same man who kicked off his first campaign with a claim that Mexicans were rapists and drug runners.
The campaign video containing the Nazi phrase was deleted from Trump’s Truth Social account on Tuesday. But it did its job, as did coverage of the resulting outrage. Trump’s most faithful supporters saw the promise he intended to make, even if that promise was delivered in a way that allowed his campaign to say it wasn’t intentional. The signal was clear: This is where we’re going, but we can’t say it openly.
At least not yet.
x.com
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
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Government documents bearing Donald Trump's signature
An unnamed witness, reportedly an adviser to Donald Trump, scanned the contents of a box that had contained classified documents, and saved those digital files to her laptop, which belongs to a political action committee which pays Donald Trump’s legal expenses.
The stunning revelation was tucked away in the footnote of an 87-page court document unsealed by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell on Tuesday, in response to a separate filing in which Trump’s attorneys are claiming prosecutorial misconduct, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney who reported the details.
The filing revealed that at least four more classified documents had been found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort, in his bedroom, even after FBI agents executed and completed a search warrant months earlier, in August of 2022.
Judge Howell, Politico reports, “noted that [a] Trump adviser connected to his Save America PAC had acknowledged scanning the contents of the box that contained the classified materials in 2021 and storing them on a personal laptop provided by the PAC.”
In the footnote Judge Howell writes, “on January 6, 2023, the former president’s counsel informed the government that, in 2021, WITNESS scanned the contents of the box—produced on January 5, 2023, and previously containing classified documents—onto a laptop in her possession owned by the Save America Political Action Committee (‘PAC’), a PAC formed by the former president in 2020. … The former president’s counsel saved those scans onto a thumb drive and provided the thumb drive to the government that day.”
Axios adds: “A witness scanned the contents of the box containing the classified materials and stored them on a laptop in her possession owned by Trump’s Save America PAC, according to a footnote in the opinion.”
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, pointing to the Politico report, adds: “This was the incident where Trump aide Chamberlain Harris — known as ROTUS, short for Receptionist of the United States — scanned and uploaded classified docs onto her laptop … Guardian reported this contemporaneously last year, as did CNN.”
Lowell also pointed to The Guardian’s report.
The Save America PAC according to Open Secrets, raised well over $108 million in the 2021-2022 cycle, and spent over $121 million. In the 2023-2024 cycle, the PAC has raised over $76 million, and spent well over $85 million.
“Since leaving office, former president Trump has been involved in an array of criminal and civil litigation — some that relates to his campaigns and presidency and some that does not. To cover the enormous legal bills, estimated at more than $100 million, he has turned to his political action committees (PACs), essentially having campaign donors pay costs for which he would otherwise be on the hook personally,” the Brennan Center for Justice reported earlier this month.
“Following his 2020 election loss, Trump received more than $250 million in donations from supporters to fuel an ‘election defense fund.’ He divided that money between two campaign entities: his 2020 presidential campaign committee, which he subsequently converted into a freestanding PAC called Make America Great Again (MAGA) PAC, and a second entity called Save America PAC, which is a so-called ‘leadership PAC‘ (a type of PAC that a federal candidate can establish for the ostensible purpose of supporting other candidates).”
National security attorney Brad Moss on Tuesday, commenting on Politico’s report of the additional classified documents at Mar-a-Lago wrote: “Reminder that the MAL docs case was and will always have been the cleanest, most straightforward criminal prosecution of the four against the former president. That the public won’t see it brought to fruition before they go to the voting booth is a stain on the judicial system.”
This article has been updated with the details from The Guardian’s Lowell.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
Similarly to his MAGA colleague — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) — on Tuesday, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) claimed that President Joe Biden wanted to have former President Donald Trump killed during the FBI's raid on the Mar-a-Lago estate.
Referencing the statement, "Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary ...." Gosar claimed via X/Twitter: "Biden ordered the hit on Trump at Mar-a-Lago."
About an hour prior to the Arizona congressman's claim, Rep. Greene baselessly claimed that "Biden and the FBI planned to assassinate" the former president.
ABC News Justice Department reporter Alex Mallon reported via X/Twitter, "FBI issues rare statement directly responding to this attack from Trump and his allies. Says 'standard protocol' was followed - 'No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter."
ABC News contributor Sarah Isgur noted: "Anytime the fbi takes an adversarial action like executing a search warrant, there is a deadly force policy. If there is danger to you or public and there’s no alternatives, you are authorized to use deadly force. This is standard policy."
She added, "And of course they gave the Secret Service and local law enforcement a heads up. Authorized to use deadly force is not the same as 'planning to shoot people.' But every briefing has to include a deadly force policy that is acknowledged by every agent before they go in."
Adam Kinzinger replied: "Gosar is a clown."
Lawyer Bradley P. Moss said: "Per Trump, Biden has complete immunity"
A former CIA attorney under the account @secretsandlaws wrote: "As a general rule, I don't judge any lawyer for zealously representing a criminal defendant, but blatant distortions in legal filings like this were clearly designed to generate over-the-top responses from Trump's supporters, just like the one below. It's unethical and immoral."
Lawrence Hurley said: "Based on Trump's arguments in his election interference case, Biden could not be prosecuted if he had actually ordered this..."
Doug Thompson replied: "I try not to retweet nonsense but this is outrageous.Pre-authorization for use of deadly force is routine when issuing a search warrant. 'Go search for and seize evidence at the scene of a serious crime but go unarmed' would be absurd."
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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Justice Samuel Alito
The conspiratorial antics of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, as exposed recently in the national media, have raised the gravest doubt about his bias in matters before the Supreme Court — and provoked demands that he recuse himself from any case concerning former President Donald Trump, the 2020 presidential election or the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Published reports have revealed Alito flew an inverted American flag — a symbol of Trumpist "stop the steal" propaganda — outside his suburban Virginia home in Jan. 2021, just days after the attack on the Capitol and while the high court was still considering a 2020 election case. With typical manly resolve, the conservative jurist responded by blaming his wife Martha Ann, who supposedly felt insulted by an anti-Trump yard sign on a neighbor's lawn, for that gross ethical trespass.
As Alito knows perfectly well, there is no excuse for his behavior, even if an obnoxious neighbor annoyed Mrs. Alito. The canons that govern judicial conduct in the lower courts state clearly that what he did was inappropriate, and the Supreme Court's own recently adopted ethical code states it even more plainly: "A Justice should not engage in ... political activity." Moreover, the court expressly forbade all of its employees from involvement in politics.
Of course, Alito did not apologize for the brazenly partisan display at his house nor even acknowledge the fresh harm he has inflicted on the court's already badly bruised reputation. No, he merely issued an arrogant dismissal of anyone who questioned his actions, knowing full well that under the rules the justices have set for themselves, no one is ever going to hold him accountable.
This is not Alito's first or only ethical offense. Last year, the investigative news site Pro Publica revealed he had taken a luxury fishing trip to Alaska with Republican billionaire donor Paul Singer, failed to disclose that gift, then failed to recuse himself from a case in which Singer held a substantial financial interest. Rather than admit this blatant violation, Alito brusquely rejected any criticism of his conduct, which nonpartisan legal experts described as outrageous.
Even if the Senate won't discipline Alito (or the equally tainted Justice Clarence Thomas) via impeachment, he should at least be confronted with a demand that corresponds to his offense. The recusal urged by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), the excessively deferential chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is insufficient.
The proper demand is for Alito's resignation.
Telling this unworthy figure to step down would deliver a brisk message about the minimum standards for a federal judge at any level. And it would say that casually undermining democratic values is unacceptable for a jurist in his elevated position.
What Alito did on those January days is unforgivable for a simple reason. At a time when Trump and his henchmen were seeking to overturn a legitimate election by force and deception, Alito gave an unsolicited public endorsement of their scheme.
By then, Alito certainly knew that the Republican claims of voter fraud, manipulated data systems, foreign interference with voting machines, and stuffed ballot boxes were bogus, with no supporting evidence. He and his colleagues on the court had rejected those claims and confirmed President Joe Biden's victory in their own decisions.
In only one those cases — which involved Pennsylvania's acceptance of late mail ballots — did Alito, Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch dissent from the majority's rulings against the Republican plaintiffs. But even in that instance they admitted the number of ballots at stake could not affect Biden's claim to the Keystone State's electoral votes or the election result.
Indeed, the Supreme Court decision in the Pennsylvania case, on February 22, 2021, finally and resoundingly underlined the 2020 outcome and quashed the election deniers. Yet one month earlier, Alito had cast doubt not only on the integrity of the election but on the court's own unanimous affirmation of it, a betrayal of his colleagues and his oath.
A Supreme Court justice has no greater responsibility than to uphold the law and safeguard democracy. When Alito mocked that duty, he forfeited the right to keep his job.
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden
After President Joe Biden expressed interest in debating presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election, right-wing media claimed Biden is running another “basement campaign” and his “puppeteers” would never allow any debates because it would be the “kiss of death” to the president's campaign. Those claims have followed years of right-wing and mainstream media fixating on the president’s age and mental acuity.
On May 15, Biden announced he had accepted an invitation to a CNN debate, and within hours, Biden and Trump mutually agreed to two debates, one each on CNN and ABC.
Biden and Trump have agreed to participate in two debates
- On May 15, Trump and Biden mutually agreed to participate in a series of two debates, which will be hosted by CNN and ABC, respectively. The candidates are now scheduled to debate on June 27 and September 10 after Biden posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he had accepted debate invitations from the respective networks. Trump has a history of skipping presidential debates, most recently skipping those scheduled for the GOP primaries, but he has agreed to the two debates with Biden. [CNN, 5/15/24; NPR 5/16/24; The Associated Press 8/21/23; Twitter/X, 5/15/24, 5/15/24]
- Weeks before Biden and Trump agreed to the debates, Biden had publicly expressed his desire to do so. In April, radio host Howard Stern asked Biden if he would debate Trump. Biden replied: “I am, somewhere, I don’t know when, but I am happy to debate him.” On May 9, Biden was asked when he would debate Trump during a White House event, to which he responded, “Set it up.” [The New York Times, 4/26/24; The White House, 5/9/24]
Right-wing and mainstream media have fixated on the president’s age and mental acuity
- Right-wing media have repeatedly attacked Biden for his age and claimed that he is too old and mentally unfit to campaign and continue serving in office. Beginning in 2020, Trump and his right-wing media allies attacked Biden for hosting virtual campaign events during the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming that he was hiding in the “basement” to hide his age and lack of stamina. [Media Matters, 7/1/20, 2/9/24, 3/8/24; The Hill, 9/11/23; Politico, 6/24/20]
- Right-wing and mainstream media outlets have disproportionately fixated on Biden’s age and mental acuity, even though Trump is nearly the same age. In various studies, Media Matters has found that both cable news and widely circulated newspapers mentioned Biden’s at a much higher rate than Trump’s. [Media Matters, 9/29/23, 10/20/23]
Right-wing media claimed Biden's “puppeteers” would not allow him to debate Trump
- In response to Biden’s “set it up” comment, former White House press secretary and Outnumbered co-host Kayleigh McEnany said, “I won’t believe that Biden debates until I see it with my own eyes.” “Make no mistake this is basement campaign 2.0, it’s just run out of the Oval Office,” she said. “So do you really think the basement campaign is going to let him out of the Oval Office to go get demolished by Donald Trump? He will sit in the metaphorical basement. I hope to be proven wrong though.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 5/10/24]
- In response to McEnany, Fox News contributor and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said, “Kayleigh’s right, there can’t be debates. If he debates it’s going to be the kiss of death for Joe Biden as well as the Democratic Party.” Referring to Biden’s “set it up” comment, Fleischer continued, “He can't even walk up the stairs to Air Force One, yet he can stand up on stage for an hour and a half at prime time? No. They’re going to have to hide him.” Then, referencing McEnany’s basement attack, Fleischer added, “You know there is a basement underneath the Oval Office. It’s located next to the Mess. And that’s what you’re going to have with Joe Biden if he takes the stage — a mess.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 5/10/24]
- As The Ingraham Angle's chyron displayed “Will Biden Actually Debate?,” Fox News contributor Byron York said that Biden did “get through” a “fawning, flattering, positive, easy” interview on The Howard Stern Show, but commented, “The idea of getting through an actual debate, clearly his team doesn’t want that.” During the segment, host Laura Ingraham played a clip of former White House secretary Jen Psaki on Meet the Press commenting on Biden saying he would debate Trump. “I was thinking, if I was in my old job from two years ago — you also don’t want him to say ‘no’ because no is weak and no is fear,” she said. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 4/29/24; NBC, Meet the Press, 4/28/24]
- When asked about Biden’s statement to Stern, Fox News contributor and former House Rep. Jason Chaffetz said that he would “be shocked if Joe Biden debated” and suggested that Biden did not check in with his “puppeteers” before making the statement. “I don’t know that he checked in with the puppeteers that help control this,” Chaffetz said. “I would be shocked if Joe Biden debated. I don’t think anybody on his team can afford to allow him to answer spontaneous questions and joust with probably one of the better debaters in Donald Trump.” He added, “He’s got to have people surrounding him just to walk to Marine One. The idea that he’s actually going to debate, I don’t think he’ll actually ever show up for that.” [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 4/26/24]
- During a Fox appearance two days later, Chaffetz once again claimed there was no way Biden’s “puppeteers” would “allow that guy out onto the stage to debate.” “The cognitive capability of this president does not allow him to debate,” Chaffetz added. Then, referencing Psaki’s appearance on Meet the Press, Chaffetz added: “Those five people on MSNBC or whatever network that was, they all know Joe Biden does not have the wherewithal to go toe-to-toe with the single best debater we’ve seen in Donald Trump.” [Fox News, The Big Weekend Show, 4/28/24]
- Podcaster and RNC co-chair Lara Trump claimed on Newsmax:“Joe Biden can barely read off a teleprompter, let alone stand on a stage and debate Donald Trump.” “We need debates,” she said. “But the team that Biden has is in a full-blown panic because that is the last thing they want.” [Twitter/X, 4/30/24]
- Real America’s Voice host John Fredericks played the clip of Psaki and claimed: “Of course he’s not going to debate, he can’t get three sentences out.” Michael Faulkender, America First chief economist, commented, “This is the guy that we would want to put in place for another four years to battle with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and he doesn’t even know what steps to go down on Air Force One or which way to exit a stage?" He went on, “So they’ve got to hide him, they’ve got to keep him in the basement, they’ve got to keep him on a beach in Delaware because he can’t possibly get out there for 90 minutes and have anywhere near the energy that Trump has.” [Real America’s Voice, Outside the Beltway with John Fredericks, 4/30/24]
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
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Jamie Dimon
In December 2022, Donald Trump said something that, in a healthy political culture, would have spelled his doom. He wrote, "A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great 'Founders' did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!"
That is not the language of populism; that is aspiring despotism.
And how many Republicans announced after this that they could no longer in good conscience support Trump? I counted one. Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton said the post was "disqualifying" and that all GOP candidates should issue "Shermanesque" statements to that effect.
As with so many landings along the steep staircase of Republican decline, things would have been different if there had been pushback; if leading Republican officeholders and opinion shapers had stood on their hind legs and said, "Hey, I liked Trump fine until now but this is a deal breaker for me." But there was barely a bleat from the party; it was thoroughly demoralized in all senses of the word.
Today, the Constitution terminator leads in most of the polls, and bigwigs from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, are telling themselves and others that a second Trump term might actually be OK.
Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase reassured his audience in Davos (where else?) that Trump did many good things while in office and that whatever the outcome of the November election, "My company will survive and thrive."
Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, and hedge fund manager John Paulson hosted a fundraiser for Trump, reports Bloomberg News. Billionaire investor Nelson Peltz endorsed Trump, as did Robert Bigelow, a Ron DeSantis backer who has made his peace with the certain GOP nominee.
Lenin is supposed to have said that when it came time to hang them, the "capitalists will sell us the rope." These capitalists are deluding themselves if they imagine that another Trump term in office will be good for them. Yes, Trump is a "businessman," but more in the style of Tony Soprano than Andrew Carnegie.
Trump is promising an all-out trade war — 10% tariffs on all products, a 60% tariff on goods from China, and a 100% duty on imported cars. Think he hasn't the power? In his first term, he cited "national security" to impose tariffs on Canada (Canada!) and got away with it. The inflationary effect of his new, larger tariffs would be off the charts.
Similarly, Trump has issued broad hints that he will tamper with the independence of the Federal Reserve, which could spell much worse inflation than we've yet experienced.
In any case, what these Trump backers seem not to appreciate is that their riches are only possible because the United States is a stable, democratic country. If we cease to be stable — and perceived as such by investors around the world — our national debt would become a crushing burden. If we reelect a lying, despot-loving, quadruple-indicted, ignorant cretin, the United States will be a lot less appealing to overseas investors. And when we cease to be a safe haven for foreigners' nest eggs, we will have to raise interest rates to attract capital, which will increase the burden of our existing debt. How would Wall Street like them apples?
Honestly, these economic arguments ought to be third- and fourth-order considerations for any American — including billionaires. Economic stability is important, but the gravest threat is to our liberty.
We are staring down the possibility of putting someone back in power who has demonstrated that he is willing to use informal violence to achieve his anti-democratic ends. He attempted a coup with a mob of enraged zealots. How tragically foolish must you be to give him the power to wield formal, state-sanctioned violence? Think the president hasn't the power? Read the Insurrection Act.
The reason Trump was unable to order that border crossers be shot in the legs, or that the IRS conduct audits of his foes, or any of the myriad other crimes, outrages or stupidities the former president contemplated was that his own hires talked him out of things or slow-walked them until Trump's goldfish attention turned elsewhere.
In a second term, those officials would be gone. As his former chief of staff John Kelly put it, "The lesson the former president learned from his first term is don't put guys like me ... in those jobs. The lesson he learned was to find sycophants."
The foreign policy implications of electing Trump are just as frightening. He disrupted key American alliances in NATO and East Asia in his first term, but would destroy them in a second term. Without the U.S. security guarantee, nations around the globe would rush to acquire their own nuclear stockpiles. Trump would reward Putin's aggression by abandoning Ukraine, which would whet Putin's appetite for the Baltics, Xi's appetite for Taiwan, and God only knows what other aggressors' plans.
Those are the stakes. It is tragic and shameful that so many fail to see it.
Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
Rep. James Comer
The fur was flying in a contentious hearing Thursday night as the House Oversight and Investigations Committee passed a resolution to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress. Democrats, with some help from GOP Chair James Comer, exposed the purely political motives behind this attack on Merrick and President Joe Biden over the White House’s refusal to turn over audio and video recordings from Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.
The White House claimed executive privilege on the Hur recordings, with counsel Ed Siskel saying in a letter to Congress that the GOP lawmakers had no legitimate legislative purpose and that their intent in getting the recording was obvious—“to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.”
Comer proved exactly that Thursday just before the hearing, sending out a fundraising appeal—using his Oversight Committee title—declaring that “Biden and his advisors are terrified that I will release the recordings, forcing the media and Democrats to answer for the dismal decline of Biden’s mental state.”
The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, blasted Comer in his opening statement. “I thought you were serious about the legal enterprise here and not just another political huckster calling hearings to make a buck.”
Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida provided a must-see “spirited reading” of Comer’s fundraising pitch, after pointing out that the hearing had been delayed so that GOP members could make a pilgrimage to Manhattan to attend Donald Trump’s hush money trial. He noted that the pitch came from “the desk of the Oversight Chairman,” adding “I’m not sure you can do that, but I’m not an ethics expert.”
It was downhill from Republicans after that, largely thanks to the antics of—who else—Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene who threw the process into chaos with a personal attack on Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, jibing “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”
The ensuing fight lasted nearly an hour, with Comer struggling to regain order, and culminated in a vote on whether to allow Greene to continue to participate. It ended in a party-line 22-20 vote, with one exception: Greene’s arch nemesis Rep. Lauren Boebert voted with Democrats to muffle Greene.
To get a sense of how surreal the whole mess was, there’s this: “I just want to apologize to the American people,” Boebert said. “When things get as heated as they have, unfortunately, it’s an embarrassment on our body as a whole.”
The whole debacle, one Democrat suggested, was fueled by the booze certain members consumed before the hearing—and an audience of lawmakers drinking during it. One panel member claimed “we have some members in the room who are drinking inside the hearing room, who are not members of this hearing.”
The crass politics of Comer, the Greene chaos, the partying—it’s all a reflection on just how low the GOP has sunk. It’s also making Speaker Mike Johnson’s job that much harder. Because the hardliners are going to push him to hold a vote on the contempt resolution, and some of the more moderate—and vulnerable—Republicans don’t want to go anywhere near it.
Republican Rep. David Joyce of Illinois is one of them, telling Politico that Congress has “important” work to do “but going after the attorney general isn’t one of them.”
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
Tavern patrons in San Diego, California watch Donald Trump and Joe Biden debate on October 20, 2020
President Joe Biden's campaign pulled a fast one on former President Donald Trump's team, according to the co-founder and co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD).
In a recent interview with Politico, Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr. — the former chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) who has helmed the CPD for several decades — insisted the CPD was still alive and well despite the two campaigns going around his organization to hold their debates. The CPD chief did a combination of pushing back against the Biden team's assertions that its scheduled September and October general election debates were held too late in the election season, and praise for Biden's reelection campaign for managing to get Trump to agree to terms that were not the most favorable for the ex-president.
Fahrenkopf described the Trump team's acceptance of two general election debates hosted by CNN and ABC News "political malpractice," noting that the ex-president should have read the fine print before signing on the dotted line.
"Donald makes decisions like this and I’m not sure he listens to the staff," he said. "And I don’t think he ever saw all of the details that were in there. And that is a pretty spectacular job by the Biden people."
One of the major sticking points Biden's team wanted for both debates was not having a crowd present. An unnamed Biden aide speaking anonymously told Politico that because "Trump feeds off the crowd" and that cheering supporters "give him life," they demanded the debate room be empty save for the two candidates and the moderators.
"We wanted to take that away," the aide said.
Other demands Biden wanted that Trump agreed to included microphones that can be muted if a candidate speaks out of turn, and having moderators who didn't have a pro-Trump bias. That second demand sparked outrage from Fox News, with several of the networks prominent hosts worrying that CNN and ABC moderators would fact-check Trump while he was in mid-sentence.
Aside from the terms of the debate themselves, Trump may also not perform well due to his relative lack of experience. The former president hasn't debated since 2020, when he and Biden squared off in a shouting match that moderator Chris Wallace helplessly failed to control as Trump continuously interrupted his opponent. He notably did not participate in any of the Republican primary debates hosted by the RNC, and usually held competing events on nights his rivals debated.
In the two debates, which will take place in June and September, Biden will likely hammer the former president on his embrace of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that allowed for legal abortions. Republicans have yet to notch a win in any election when abortion is on the ballot — even in typically red states like Kansas, Kentucky and Montana. Biden is also aiming to highlight Trump's multiple threats to democracy in the upcoming debates.
Fahrenkopf told Politico that even though the CPD likely won't get to host a general election debate this cycle, that he hopes the Biden-Trump debates on CNN and ABC will be informative and educational for voters.
"We were created for one purpose and one purpose only... we want to make sure in every presidential election cycle that the man or woman who wants to be president or vice president of the United States debates their opponents. That’s our purpose," he said. "Now, if the Biden and Trump campaigns can reach some agreement and go forward with two debates, and that happens and they do a good job? That’s the only thing we exist for. I don’t get anything out of this in any other way. What happens to the debate commission thereafter, I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see."
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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Lauren Boebert
Even the most far-right members of the House Republican Conference are condemning Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's (R-GA) hijacking of a recent committee hearing.
During a Thursday night meeting of the House Oversight Committee, members were debating legislation to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt when Greene suddenly insulted Rep. Jasmine Crockett's (D-TX) "fake eyelashes." This resulted in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) coming to Crockett's defense, demanding that Greene's words be struck from the record and for the Georgia Republican to apologize. Crockett asked committee chair Rep. James Comer (R-KY) if, hypothetically, she would be in the wrong for mentioning that a certain member of the committee had a "bleach blonde, bad built butch body."
Crockett recounted the incident in an interview with The Daily Beast, saying that Greene's comment about her eyelashes was "absolutely a racist thing."
"Any woman that knows anything about makeup and getting done up knows that eyelashes are one of those things that kind of come with it," she said. "MAGA has been trolling on social media for a while and it’s a way of them basically calling me ghetto and things like that, because of my hair and my lashes and my nails."
"It’s almost like, well, we don’t have anything intelligent to counter that with. So instead, we’ll be racist and we’ll attack her and go after her looks. Which, frankly, I am not lacking in my confidence about my looks…. but they do it all the time," she added. "So I think this was just a fundraising ploy for her and it’s also just her brand. Her brand is chaos and ignoring the rules."
The only Republican on the Oversight Committee to vote with Democrats to silence Greene for the remainder of the hearing was Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who has publicly squabbled with Greene in the past. Boebert suggested the far-right Georgia congresswoman was making other Republicans look bad with her behavior.
"It was embarrassing what was going on," Boebert said on Capitol Hill. "I couldn’t bring myself to stand in defense of that, I wouldn’t do it for the other side."
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) also weighed in on the fracas, saying Greene's outburst was "not a good look for Congress."
The Oversight Committee eventually approved the contempt resolution against Garland, in response to the attorney general refusing to hand over audio recordings of President Joe Biden's conversations with former Department of Justice special counsel Robert Hur. After concluding his investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents, Hur declined to charge the president with any crimes.
Ocasio-Cortez later tweeted that the resolution was approved notably without any votes on any amendments, which she characterized as an extraordinary breach of the legislative process on Comer's part.
"You see, this is the microcosm of what authoritarians do on a larger scale," she wrote. "ID a vulnerable person/community that’s easier to break the rules towards, normalize it (often w/ “both sides” rhetoric), and then use that rule-breaking to undermine deeper processes and rule of law."
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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Rep. Matt Gaetz outside the New York Supreme Court for Trump trial on May 15, 2024
The first Congressional Gold Medal was struck in 1776 as a way of saying thanks to George Washington. Since then, the medal has been awarded just 184 times to hallowed figures including Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama. Compared to the 647 civilian Presidential Medals of Freedom or the 3,517 military Medals of Honor, the Congressional Gold Medal is the rarest of the great honors awarded in America.
Naturally, a group of Republicans is angling to present one to Donald Trump.
As Politicoreports, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida is leading a squad of six Republicans determined to bestow a medal on Trump. Adding to the absurdity, they claim they want to award the medal because of Trump’s “dedication to strengthening America’s diplomatic relations.” Which apparently means threatening to abandon allies, enabling Vladimir Putin, and exchanging “love letters” with Kim Jong Un.
Finding the best way to show obeisance to Donald Trump is every modern Republican’s major obsession. Checking in at Trump’s criminal trial for falsifying documents to hide a sexual encounter with a porn star and protect his candidacy in the 2016 election is the hot new ticket for Republicans hoping to survive the 2024 election—and the purges that would follow a Trump victory.
However, not everyone can blow off a day of work and run to a New York courthouse to help Trump get around his gag order.
Scoring some sweet time in front of Fox News cameras to tell Trump they want to give him the greatest honor Congress can award must sound pretty good to this group of House Republicans, which includes Rep. Lauren Boebert and Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler.
They get to talk about Trump’s accomplishments in the field of diplomacy, like that time Trump decided to launch a verbal war on Canada. Or how Trump prepared individual insults for G20 leaders. Or his no-U.S.-translator-allowed meetings with Putin. Or how world support for the U.S. crashed under Trump and rebounded under Joe Biden.
But they know it’s all just pretend. There’s absolutely zero chance that Trump will get a Congressional Gold Medal for his “exceptional leadership.”
That’s because the medal can only be awarded through an act of Congress. Two-thirds of the members on the House Committee on Financial Services and the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs are required to sponsor any proposed recipient before the measure can even make it to the House and Senate floor for a vote. And then the measure has to pass the full House with two-thirds of the vote.
Trump isn’t going to get past square one, and all six of those pushing this little scheme know it. This is just another example of so-called virtue signaling by Republicans—where the only virtue they understand is bolstering Trump's ego.
There is another shiny option Trump can strive for: the Congressional Award Gold Medal, which has been awarded to thousands of Americans. To get one, Trump would only have to do 400 hours of voluntary public service, 200 hours of personal development, 200 hours of physical fitness, and a five-day, four-night expedition or exploration. It sounds unlikely, but Republicans might declare that Trump’s rallies, social media attacks, golf outings, and court time in Manhattan satisfy those requirements.
He would also need to be between 14 and 18 years old. But considering the things Republicans are willing to believe about Trump, that doesn’t seem like an insurmountable problem.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
